LSAT 126 – Section 3 – Question 02

LSAT 126 - Section 3 - Question 02

October 2008

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Question
QuickView		 Type Tags Answer
Choices		 Curve Question
Difficulty		 Psg/Game/S
Difficulty		 Explanation
PT126 S3 Q02
+LR
Flaw or descriptive weakening +Flaw
Link Assumption +LinkA
A
0%
158
B
2%
151
C
98%
163
D
0%
147
E
0%
152
123
131
139
 +Easiest 144.364 +SubsectionEasier

Board member: The J Foundation, a philanthropic organization, gave you this grant on the condition that your resulting work not contain any material detrimental to the J Foundation’s reputation. But your resulting work never mentions any of the laudable achievements of our foundation. Hence your work fails to meet the conditions under which the grant was made.

A
takes for granted that a work that never mentions any laudable achievements cannot be of high intellectual value
The author’s reasoning doesn’t relate to intellectual value. The argument concerns whether there is harm to the J Foundation’s reputation, not whether there is a lack of intellectual value.
B
confuses a condition necessary for the receipt of a grant with a condition sufficient for the receipt of a grant
The author doesn’t try to conclude that someone must have received a grant on the basis of having satisfied a necessary condition for a grant. The conclusion concerns whether someone who already received a grant is satisfying what’s required of them.
C
presumes, without providing justification, that a work that does not mention a foundation’s laudable achievements is harmful to that foundation’s reputation
The author assumes that failing to mention the good stuff J Foundation has done hurts the foundation’s reputation. This overlooks the possibility that there might be no reputational harm. Perhaps there’s no increase in reput., but that doens’t imply there has been a decrease.
D
fails to consider that recipients of a grant usually strive to meet a foundation’s conditions
Whether the recipient has tried to satisfy the conditions has no bearing on whether what they’ve done actually satisfies them. The argument concerns whether the recipient has actually satisfied the conditions.
E
fails to consider the possibility that the work that was produced with the aid of the grant may have met all conditions other than avoiding detriment to the J Foundation’s reputation
The argument points out a particular condition that the author believes has not been satisfied. Even if other conditions have been met, that doesn’t affect an argument based on a purported violation of one particular condition.

The question stem reads: The reasoning in the board member’s argument is vulnerable to criticism on grounds that the argument… This is a Flaw question.

The board member begins by claiming that the J Foundation issued “you” this grant on the condition that the resulting work did not contain anything detrimental to the J Foundation’s reputation. In other words, meeting the conditions of the grant requires that “your” work not contain anything harmful to J Foundation’s reputation. However, the board member notes that the resulting work does not mention anything positive about the J Foundation. The board member concludes that “you” have failed to meet the conditions of the grant.

Here we have a very common flaw in the LSAT: assuming that negation and opposition are the same. The board member assumes that no positive information must mean the existence of negative information. However, positive information could also imply that the information in the work was simply neutral: the information was neither good nor bad for the J Foundation’s reputation. If the resulting work was neutral, then “you” would not violate the conditions of the grant. Let’s move to the answer choices.

Answer Choice (A) is incorrect. Whether or not the work has Intellectual value has nothing to do with the board member’s argument.

Answer Choice (B) is incorrect. The author does not confuse the necessary condition of “no harmful information” for being sufficient to issue the grant.

Correct Answer Choice (C) is what we discussed. The board member has assumed that failing to mention the laudable achievements of J Foundation amounts to harming the reputation of J Foundation.

Answer Choice (D) is something the argument fails to consider, but that is not why the argument is flawed.

Answer Choice (E) is also something that the argument does not consider, but (E) is not a problem for the argument. If you failed to satisfy the necessary condition of “no harmful information,” it would not matter how many other conditions were met. The problem is that we do not know if the work actually contained harmful information.

 

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LSAT PrepTest 126 Explanations

Section 1 - Logical Reasoning

Section 2 - Reading Comprehension

Section 3 - Logical Reasoning

Section 4 - Logical Reasoning

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